SAM'S SHACK
The next Saturday was gray and chilly, but the weather did not deter
Ernest and Jack Whipple from starting off early for the woods. They
carried their chestnut bags as a matter of course, but this time the
chestnut trees offered them very little enticement. The ones they knew
best had already been robbed of their nuts, and they soon wearied of a
somewhat profitless search. It was Jack who voiced what was in the
minds of both boys.
"I wish we could run across Sam Bumpus again," he said.
Sam had said they could find him in the woods, but the woods had never
seemed so extensive and it was like hunting for a needle in a
haystack. They arrived at Beaver Pond and the Trapper's Cave without
encountering any sign of the man and his dog.
Chiefly as a matter of habit they built a small fire in front of the
Cave and sat down beside it on their log seat to consider the problem
of finding an elusive hunter in the wide woods. They did not even open
the treasure chest.
"He said anybody could tell us where to find him," said Jack, "but
there's no one to ask. People don't live in the woods, do they?"
Ernest sat pondering. "Well," said he at length, "there's that old
woman that gave us the doughnuts one day. Do you remember? She had a
lot of white hens that went right into her house, and a little dog
named Snider that was so old he could hardly breathe."
"Oh, yes," responded Jack, brightening up. "Where does she live?"
"I don't know exactly," said Ernest, mournfully, "but I think it was
over that way. We might find her if we hunted."
The boys arose, put out their fire carefully, as all good woodsmen
should, and started off through the woods again. They must have
tramped for nearly an hour, but the very uncertainty of the outcome of
their quest gave it a touch of adventure and kept them going. At last,
after following various false clues, they came out unexpectedly and
abruptly into the clearing behind the old woman's house. The cackling
of fowls and the wheezy barking of little old Snider greeted them. As
they approached, the old lady herself appeared in the doorway of her
kitchen, clad in a faded blue dress and leaning on her stick. As soon
as she saw that it was boys her face broke into a smile.
"Come right in," she said, "and I'll get you some cookies."
The boys entered and sat in the kitchen chairs to eat their cookies.
They were anxious to be on their way in search of Sam Bumpus, but
politeness demanded that they linger a few minutes. Ernest inquired
after the health of old Snider. The widow shook her head sadly.
"He's failin'," she replied. "I can see he's failin'. His teeth is all
gone so he can't eat much and he has the azmy pretty bad. It's what us
old folks has to expect, I s'pose, but I don't know what I'll do when
Snider goes. He's all I've got now."
She wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron while the boys
fidgeted in their chairs. They felt sorry for her, but they didn't
know what to say on an occasion like this. Ernest reached down and
patted the little dog's head.
"Poor old Snider," he murmured. Somehow that seemed to comfort the old
lady.
At last Ernest found it possible to ask her if she knew Sam Bumpus.
"Lor', yes," she responded. "Queer old codger, Sam is, but the
best-hearted man in the world. Many a good turn he's done me. He was
here only this mornin' with some bones to make into soup for Snider."
"Where did he go?" inquired Ernest.
"He didn't say where he was goin', but I reckon if you was to go over
to the Poor Farm you could find out. He was headed that way."
The boys had ridden by the Poor Farm on several occasions but had
never visited it, and they felt a slight hesitation about doing so
now, but the woman assured them that the inmates were all quite
harmless and gave them directions for a short cut. Thanking her for
her kindness, and patting Snider good-by, they set off along a rutty
woods road and in a little while came to the Poor Farm. They crossed
an inclosed field where a small drove of hogs were feeding, and went
around to the front of the big white house.
They did not have to inquire for Sam Bumpus, for there he was, as
natural as life, sitting on the steps of the veranda with Nan
stretched out beside him. As the boys turned the corner of the house
he arose with alacrity and held out his hand to them.
"Well, well," he cried in his gruff voice, his face wreathed with
smiles, "this is a sight for sore eyes. Come right up and set down
here. I can't invite you in because this ain't my house. I'm just a
visitor here myself. I have a lot of old cronies here, and besides, I
want to get familiar with the place because I may have to come here to
live myself sometime."
He rattled on so that the boys didn't have a chance to answer. He
led them up on the veranda to an old man who sat in a rocking chair,
bundled up in a blanket, smoking a pipe carved wonderfully in the form
of a stag's head.
"These are my friends Ernest and Jack Whipple," he said to the old
man, "and they like dogs."
At this the old man took his pipe from his mouth with a thin,
trembling hand, looked at them out of pink, watery eyes, smiled, and
nodded his white head.
"This is Captain Tasker," Sam told the boys. "He don't talk much, but
he's forgotten more than you or I ever knew. Some day I'll tell you
about his dog that followed him to war. He's a Civil War veteran, and
he got wounded at Antietam. Show 'em your Grand Army badge, Captain.
See?" he added to the boys. "I told you I was partic'lar who I knew."
Nan got up and stretched herself and looked up at her master
inquiringly.
"Yes, old girl," said Sam, "it's time we was gettin' along." Then,
noticing that the boys looked disappointed, he added, "Come walk a
piece with us, won't you? I'd like to talk with you."
The boys readily acquiesced, and bidding good-by to Captain Tasker,
they set out with Sam along a leafy woods road, with Nan ranging
ahead. All about them the forest beckoned alluringly, and Sam told
them of spots where grouse and quail abounded, or where one might
reasonably expect to "jump" a rabbit.
Arriving at length at the Oakdale Road, Sam and the boys seated
themselves for a little while on a fallen log, while the former
concluded a discourse on bird dogs and hunting.
"Setters," he was saying, "are usually supposed to be the keenest and
pointers the strongest, but in my opinion it all depends on the
partic'lar dog. Nowadays I hear a good deal about the pointer bein'
the best dog, and I've owned some good ones myself. There's nothing
prettier than a strong, wiry pointer doublin' and turnin' in the brush
and freezin' to a steady point. But for my own part, give me a
well-bred Llewellyn setter; they're the humanest dog they is. They've
got the bird sense, too. Oh, you can't beat 'em."
"Is it hard to train them?" asked Ernest, who was of a practical turn
of mind.
"Not so hard, if you know how," said Sam. "They have so much brains
that they learn about as fast as you teach 'em. But you've got to know
how to go at it. I've seen good sportsmen make a mess of it. First
off, you've got to find out if they've got a nose. That's easy enough
if you live with 'em and watch 'em. Hide something they want and see
how quick they find it. You've got to take 'em when they're young,
of course. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, you know. But a good
bird dog has got it bred in him, and he picks it up quick enough if
you can only be patient and if you show half as much sense as the dog
does."
Then he told, in his own peculiar fashion, how he started with the
puppies, teaching them to retrieve objects such as sticks and balls,
and later dead birds that they must learn to carry gently without
using their teeth.
"Never let 'em think it's just a romp they're havin'," he continued.
"I like to play with puppies as well as anyone, but when I'm breakin'
'em I let 'em understand that it's business. Never let 'em have their
own way if they want to do the wrong thing, and never give 'em an
order without seein' that it's carried out if it takes all day. That's
where the patience comes in. Teach 'em to obey, and you can do most
anything with 'em."
"Do you whip them if they don't obey?" asked Ernest.
"Never whipped a dog in my life," said Sam, decidedly, "except a fox
terrier I had once. They're different. A whipped setter is a spoiled
setter, and if you can't make 'em do what you want 'em to without
whippin' 'em or bribin' 'em, you'd better get out of the business. Of
course, I sometimes give a puppy a piece of cookie or something to
show him he's done what he ought to, but I never use the whip. There's
other kinds of punishment that work better and don't break their
spirits. Just keep 'em from havin' what they want, and tease 'em into
wantin' it awful bad, and you can make 'em do most anything."
He then went on to explain his method of teaching a young dog to hold
his point in the field. He used a long rope tied to a stout collar,
and led the dog to a thicket where a dead bird lay. When the dog got
the scent and started to dash in, a sharp jerk on the rope restrained
him, and in time he was thus taught to stand rigid when the scent came
strong to his nostrils.
"That's one way to teach a dog not to chase chickens, too," he added.
"But a puppy born of trained parents gets the pointin' habit almost by
instinct, and retrievin', too. The main thing is to make him
understand that he's got to do the trick and not something else that
happens to pop into his head. After that, you can teach 'em to answer
your whistle or a wave of your hand and hunt just where you want 'em
to."
"Aren't they afraid of a gun at first?" asked Jack, who had never
learned not to jump when a gun went off.
"Some of 'em are," said Sam. "If a dog is gun-shy he's got to be
broken of that before he's any good in the field. Some folks say you
can never break a dog that's really gun-shy, but I never seen one yet
that I couldn't cure."
"How do you do it?" asked Ernest.
"Well, one way is to give the dog something he wants every time you
shoot off a gun. You can shoot over his dinner, and not let him have
any till he comes up to where you and the gun are. Keep at it, and
after awhile he begins to connect the sound of the gun with things
that he likes. Always take a gun when you go out for a walk with him,
and after awhile he will bark and act happy every time you take it
from the rack. The whole idea of breakin' a bird dog is to make him
think that the thing you want him to do is the thing he wants to do,
and never let that idea get away from him."
The boys continued to ply him with questions, for this was a subject
that they had never heard about before, and Sam willingly added more
details of the process of training. At length he took a big dollar
watch from his pocket and consulted it.
"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know it was gettin' so
late. I'll have to be hurryin' along. Say," he added, a little
wistfully, "come up to my house and see me sometime, won't you? I
ain't got anything very elegant up there, but I could show you
something in the line o' dogs and guns that might interest you."
"Oh, we'd love to, if our folks'll let us," said Ernest. "Where do you
live?"
Sam gave them careful directions.
"First and third Tuesdays used to be my days for callers, but nobody
came," said he, as he started up the road with Nan. "So now any old
day will do--if I'm home."
"How about next Saturday?" asked Ernest.
"Saturday it is," said Sam Bumpus, and with a wave of his hand he
vanished around a bend in the road.
Clothes do not make the man, and boys are apt to overlook certain
superficial peculiarities and defects which seem more significant to
their elders. In Sam Bumpus they saw only a man of good humor and
wonderful wisdom, a man whose manner of life was vastly more
interesting than that of the common run of people, whose knowledge of
the lore of woods and fields, of dogs and hunting, entitled him to a
high place in their estimation. They overlooked the externals, the
evidences of poverty and shiftlessness, his lack of education, and saw
only his native wit and shrewdness, his kinship with the world of
nature, and his goodness of heart. They considered it a piece of rare
good fortune to have made the acquaintance of so wise and
sympathetic a person and they felt indebted to him for permission to
visit him, to hear him talk, and to glean from him something of the
knowledge that had come to him through experience.
To Sam Bumpus, however, the obligation seemed to be on the other side.
The boys did not know it, but Sam Bumpus was a lonely man and craved
human companionship. He lived like a hermit in his little shack in the
woods and his peculiarities had set him somewhat apart from the world
of men. He had no living relatives, and apart from the old lady in the
woods road, the inmates of the Poor Farm, and a few other
out-of-the-way people with whom he had been able to win his way
through his natural generosity and kindness, he had practically no
friends but his dogs. He understood dogs better than he understood
men, and, to tell the truth, he esteemed them more highly; yet he
sometimes hungered for human comradeship. That two frank-hearted,
unspoiled boys should seek him out and seem to desire his company gave
him a feeling of unaccustomed satisfaction, and he looked forward to
their promised visit fully as eagerly as did the boys themselves.
This proposed visit was such an unusual affair that Ernest Whipple
considered it advisable to speak to his father about it. Mr. Whipple
was reading his paper and made but little comment, but Mrs. Whipple,
who was in the room at the time, raised objections.
"Don't you think it might be unsafe for the boys to go away off there
alone?" she asked anxiously. "We don't know anything about this man.
He may have a bad influence on them, even if nothing more serious
happens to them. He's a very uncouth person, I should say, and hardly
a fit companion for little boys."
"Oh, I don't think he'll hurt them," said Mr. Whipple from behind his
paper.
But the mother wasn't satisfied, and after the boys had gone to bed
she again brought the matter up.
"Well, mother," said Mr. Whipple, "he probably isn't the sort of
guide, philosopher, and friend that we would have picked out for the
boys, but parents can't always do the picking. They are getting older
all the time, and sooner or later they must be thrown on their own
resources. Self-reliance doesn't come from constant protection and
hemming in. We can't keep them from striking up acquaintances, and
before we raise objections we should be sure that they're well
grounded; then we shall be able to make our objections count for
more."
"But I should think there was good ground for objection in this case,"
she persisted. "This man seems to be so crude and rough, if nothing
worse."
"Oh, he's all right," responded the father. "Don't think I'm careless
about these things. I've made some inquiries, and though I find that
Bumpus is unconventional and queer, as they say, and improvident and
uneducated, he's honest and law-abiding. So far as I can find out, the
worst thing he ever does is to give tobacco to the inmates of the Poor
Farm. I know people right here on Washburn Street that would do the
boys more harm. Just because he doesn't live like folks on Washburn
Street doesn't make him bad."
"Well," said Mrs. Whipple, doubtfully, "I suppose you know best, but
for my part I would much prefer to keep them safe home with me, for
some years to come."
"That's because you've never been a boy," said Mr. Whipple, with a
smile in his eyes. "I have, and it doesn't seem so very long ago,
either."
Mrs. Whipple was not satisfied, but she did not forbid the proposed
visit. The next Saturday, therefore, found them early on their way,
filled with joyful anticipations.
Sam's shack, when at last they arrived, proved to be a forlorn affair,
built of boards of different widths, some red, some white, and some
unpainted. The sagging roof was of corrugated iron and the only
chimney was built of cement pipe guyed up with wires. But to the eyes
of the boys it was a most attractive abode. Never before had they
seen such an interesting house. There must be an element of sport in
living in a cabin like this, they thought.
Sam heard their footsteps and met them smilingly at the door. He
ushered them at once inside, where he had a wood fire roaring in his
stove, for the day was chilly, and he promptly set before them glasses
of milk and hot corn bread. Though they had breakfasted only two hours
before, they fell to with gusto, for that is the way of boys.
"How do you like my corn bread?" asked Sam.
"M-m!" murmured Jack, taking a fresh bite.
"Do you bake it yourself?" inquired Ernest.
"Sure," said Sam.
"Gee!" exclaimed Ernest, looking up at him with admiration.
After they had fully refreshed themselves, Sam took them out through a
back door, from which they could see a number of small structures that
looked as though they had been made out of dry-goods boxes. The sound
of excited barking smote their ears, a chorus of canine cries and
yelps. Old Nan came bounding forward to greet the boys, for she knew
them now, and behind her loped a big pointer.
"This is Hillcroft Dick," said Sam, by way of introduction. "He's a
famous dog, a champion on the bench and at the trials. He ain't my
dog, though. I'm just boardin' him for a man that's gone to
California. I wish I owned him, though. He's a great dog."
[Illustration: Chow Chow]
The boys didn't understand the reference to bench shows and field
trials, but they gathered that Dick was some sort of nobleman among
dogs and they were visibly impressed.
"Now we'll go out to the kennels," said Sam.
There were seven dogs, all told, besides Nan and Dick. There were
two cocker spaniels, in the first place, that Sam said he was training
for a man in Oakdale.
"I like a bigger dog, myself," said he, "but there's a lot of good dog
wrapped up in these small bundles. They're smart as whips, and though
I've got to make 'em forget their foolin' and parlor tricks, I'll soon
have 'em able to find and retrieve. Sometimes you can even teach a
spaniel to point."
The other five were all Sam's dogs, another pointer, a little smaller
than Dick, and four beautiful English setters.
"They've got the best blood in the land," said Sam, proudly, "and
every one of 'em is letter perfect on his job. This is Rex and this is
Robbin and this is Rockaway."
The boys patted and spoke to each in turn, hugely enjoying this
introduction to Sam's family.
"And this one over here is the best of all," he continued. "That's
Nellie, own sister to Nan, and what she don't know wouldn't hurt a
flea. But I guess I'd better keep you away from her to-day. She ain't
feelin' very well."
After they had fondled and played with the dogs to their hearts'
content, the boys followed Sam again into the house, where they spent
the rest of the morning smoothing Nan's silky hair and listening to
wonderful stories about the sagacity of Nellie and the other dogs.
So pleasantly was the time employed that it was eleven o'clock by
Sam's big watch before they thought it possible, and as they had
promised to be home in time for dinner, they were obliged,
reluctantly, to take their departure.
As they turned the bend in the road they looked back and saw Sam
standing in his low doorway with Nan sitting picturesquely beside him.
"Come again soon," called Sam.
"We will," the boys shouted in reply.